Single and multifamily residential and light commercial building construction, especially in North America, has been constructed predominately with wood frame or concrete block techniques. Both of these methods have provided safe, secure, economical and code compliant structures for most of the twentieth century. However, the growing populations, pressure on the world's wood and energy resources, and ever increasing land resources utilized for landfill due to relatively short life cycles of conventional structures have caused society in general and the building construction industry to rethink new construction recyclability, and durability or a much extended life cycle all at a cost that is affordable on both a first cost and cost of occupancy basis. In addition, new construction technologies must be scaleable. Many new methods have been developed to address one or more of these critical issues but few if any address all of them. Most come at a cost premium or are impractical for implementation in mass volumes.
An efficient building envelope has been proven to be the most cost effective method of maximizing the overall efficiency of a building structure and continues to keep energy costs low over the lifetime of the structure. The building envelope provides the barrier between the interior conditioned space and the outdoor environment. The energy efficiency of a building envelope is measured in two ways: the efficiency of the insulation and minimizing air infiltration and air leakage through the building envelope. The exterior walls of a structure are a key component and a significant contributor to the overall energy efficiency of the building envelope.
Concrete wall and floor construction has been a long time standard construction material in most of the world for all types of structures. Over the past 25 years, insulated concrete forms (ICF) systems have gained popularity and widespread acceptance and use, principally in North America. ICF systems provide a method of building pour-on-site concrete walls without the use of capital intensive and labor intensive permanent concrete forms, but generally ICF technology does not adequately address the issues of scaleability and affordability. In particular, the current ICF systems require trained installers and large amounts of concrete to be poured.